Strategy for Managing Followers on Twitter

One of the common use cases of marketing on Twitter is its usefulness as a channel for lead generation. Getting to that critical mass, which can be an asset to a company, is any marketers dream, be it traditional channel of marketing or social media.

In this article, let us evaluate a strategy to classify followers on Twitter and identify critical mass, along with appropriate actions. It goes without saying, the starting step for this strategy on twitter is to Listen, Understand,Categorize. And Repeat.

The picture below illustrates how followers can be classified on two dimensions: Involvement and Interest*

Classify Followers on two dimensions: Involvement and Interest

Low Interest and Active – These are the followers who talk in varied topics, not all of which are related to your topic of interest. At the same time these followers are very active on twitter. The strategy that will work here is to Nurture them; educate them in the area of your expertise. The goal will be to move this set to “high interest” zone.

High Interest and Passive – These are the followers who talk about topics that match your areas of interest. But, they are not very active. The strategy with this group will be to Engage them. Ask questions and give replies on a continuous basis. The goal will be to move them to “Active” zone.

High Interest and Active – This is the absolutely desirable group to have. Not only do they speak your language, but they do so often. It is this segment where you will find your influencers and promoters. And most active users are not necessarily neutral.If you do not quickly Convert them, remember your competitors might get them and they can soon become detractors for you.

Low Interest and Passive – These are those followers you probably got using the “Increase Follower” tool. They are not interested in what you have to say, nor do they care, as they are passive. The best strategy is to not spend much time on this group. Try engaging and nurturing – if the users do not move to either “active” or “high interest” zone – Ignore them.

* SentimentNow(TM) technology of ObjectiveMarketer can actually show mapping of your and your audience’ similarity of interests.

This is a simple strategy, but will be very effective when marketers are planning their campaigns and evaluating the strength of their target audience on Twitter. Identifying the influencers is key strategy to a successful Viral Campaign on Twitter.

The twitter follower management is really challenging . The bottom line is to make sure that you are connected to the right group so that your promotions/messages don’t end up as spam. The first email account I ever had was in hotmail , but due to the amount of spam it has I never log into that anymore.

Interesting article – although I don’t think you “manage” your followers on twitter. Some quick thoughts:

As a conceptual model this might make sense, but how do you implement it? What are the actionable steps? How do you get someone to be more “active” on twitter? How do you get someone to be more “interested” on twitter? What is the ROI for the time spent cultivating this “activity” and “interest”?

Two good points you make:

First, you want to make sure you listen to and communicate with the people that are both highly interested and active in your niche. These are the people that spread ideas (evangelists, leaders, influencers, promoters, “sneezers”).

Second, establishing a critical mass is key. From what I’ve read, the simplest way to do this is to consistently provide valuable, engaging, entertaining, educational, and/or actionable content in 140 characters or less.